We Never Speak Their Names. 89 



Love, yet no one dares to write a real love-scene. The 

 church-spire points the way to Heaven, but, in the last 

 analysis, it symbolizes what decency forbids the mention 

 of, and the sacred emblem that it bears aloft, the cross, is 

 such a sign as naughty little boys might chalk up on a 

 wall. 



So, then, it must needs be that those living things we 

 do not mention in polite society should have a link to join 

 them with what is sacred. For sacred things are " taboo," 

 and the " taboo ' upon these creatures, like any other, 

 works for the ultimate benefit of the race. Speak to my 

 people that they go forward, saith the Lord God, and to 

 be the host and victim of these parasites is to lag behind 

 in the march of progress 

 from the wilderness of 

 savagery to the Canaan 

 of real civilization. 



For all things thus 

 taboo there is a wealth of 

 names. As fast as one 

 euphuism becomes so 



familiar that 11O mental Fig -. Ig . Acanthus lectularia, or com- 

 effort is required tO mon mahogany, or chintz, or "b flat," 



or Norfolk-Howard. 



understand it, another 



must be invented. The particular beast I speak of now 

 is called in New York a " red-coat/' I suppose partly 

 from its color and partly as a relic of that patriotism 

 which, in Revolutionary days as now, gave to contemptible 

 pests the names of political foes. As far as I read history, 

 this was about the limit of New York's patriotism at that 

 time. In Baltimore it is called " mahogany flat," which 

 describes color and slTape. In Boston, it is called a 

 ' chintz," which is the word " chinch ' in tolerable 

 preservation. The chinch-bug has exactly the same per- 



